Thursday, December 19, 2013

Community Counters Exploitative Movie

Ramapo Mountains at Ramapo College

Just in time for Christmas, the season of brotherly love,
comes a Hollywood film that, according to one reviewer, takes its marquee-star hero
on a revenge mission into “the backwoods inbred portal of hell that is Bergen County, New
Jersey.”

That’s how New York Magazine reviewer David Edelstein
describes the center piece of Out of the Furnace, a newly released feature film
directed by Scott Cooper. It features Christian Bale as a Pennsylvania
steel worker who journeys after his brother, an Iraq
war vet who disappeared into an underground fighting ring in some dark corner
of Jersey.

“A movie like Out of the Furnace needs an
especially sadistic psychopath to hold our interest, and it has one in Woody
Harrelson as a man called Harlan DeGroat. He organizes brutal fights, deals
drugs, and kills people in the rough hills of Bergen County, New Jersey,”
Edelstein notes. “… a glance this morning at the local headlines confirms that
its denizens are fighting mad over Cooper’s use of family names of current
Ramapogh Native Americans — in particular DeGroat and Van Dunk. I don’t blame
them a bit for thinking they’ve been slimed.”

That review, and an incendiary one in the New York Post that
seemed to relish rehashing malicious myths about natives of the Ramapo Mountains,
were cited Wednesday in a panel discussion at Ramapo
College in Mahwah, NJ. A
promontory on the mountain ridge across the Ramapo River
from the state college is Stag Hill, which hosts the headquarters of the
Ramapough Mountain Lenape Indians.

“Elements of this movie bring back stigma not only for the
people, but the mountains, which impacts this college,” said Professor Michael
Edelstein, an organizer of the panel discussion. The gathering of about 150
people included students, faculty members, college President Peter Mercer, Mahwah
Mayor William Laforet and other community leaders, Chief Dwaine Perry and several other members of the
tribe.

Laforet recalled growing up in Mahwah when youngsters
taunted and tussled with each other over ethnic backgrounds. “We didn’t know
better,” he said. But, he added, things have changed in Mahwah, a former
farming and factory town that’s now the upscale suburban hub anchoring the
northern end of the jam-packed Route 17 commercial corridor that defines modern
Bergen County.

“This is the first time that I can recall that this
community has stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the Ramapough Mountain Indians,”
said Laforet, who earlier this month held a news conference with Chief Perry to
denounce the Hollywood movie. “This is a
moment in our history.”

“The movie is nothing more than a sensational attempt to
generate money by degenerating and insulting part of our American culture,”
Laforet said December 6 on WCBS Radio. “This type of stereotype only serves to
foster hostility, intimidation and bullying.”

At the same news conference, Perry questioned the motive for
making such a film: “Why the hatred? Why the reliving of what is obviously
racism and bigotry throughout history toward the [Ramapough] people.”

Neither Laforet, Perry or other speakers at the Ramapo College
forum bought the filmmakers’ assertion that the movie was “not based upon any
particular person or group of people,” as stated by a spokesperson for
Relativity Media, the film’s production company. Judith Sullivan, an attorney
working with the tribe, noted that the film “lists seven characters as Jackson
Whites”—a mythical name for Ramapo Mountain natives that’s been circulated in
newspaper and magazine articles for generations. “As a lawyer, I cannot believe
this film was approved by the legal department.”

“This movie clearly has been aimed at us,” said Vincent
Mann, chief of the tribe’s Turtle Clan. Even before this film came out, he
recalled, he was accosted by three teenagers who drove up to the tribal
community center on Stag Hill looking for “Jackson Whites.” Asked where they
learned about this name, the boys said “they found out about it on Weird New
Jersey,” a website that promotes state oddities.

Perhaps the most
impressive speaker on the panel to address the “hillbilly” stereotyping of Ramapo Mountain
people, which I encountered as whispered “fact” when I first moved to New Jersey in 1965, was Richard DeGroat Thomas, chief of
the tribe’s Marten Band in Staten Island,
NY.

“I’m not one of the people in the [New York] Post who eat squirrels. I design
multi-million dollar buildings,” said Thomas, a Columbia University-trained
architect, who was wearing a beaded buckskin jacket. Thomas said he saw this
film in California,
while visiting his children, who work in the film industry.

He said the best way to counter such a “negative” movie is
to do “something positive.” In a discussion with audience members, who broke into groups
to propose actions to take, Thomas said he’d like to see a movie about the real
traditions and real lives of members of his tribe.

“I think events like this are very important,” said a
student at the table where I was sitting. Another student asked if the college
had a Native American minor—and if not, why not. Furthermore, she added,
“college tours should explain the origins of the college’s name.”

Another audience member said New Jersey public schools should teach more
about the Lenape Indians, the ancestors of the state’s remaining Native
Americans. “And when you meet people using these stigmas, immediately address
this,” he added.

This reminded me of a recent discussion at a veterans’ art
workshop sparked by news articles about this film. A veteran from the Jersey City area recalled that, during the Vietnam war,
his Army reserve unit had to lay over in Mahwah during a convoy to a training
camp in New York State. The soldiers were warned not to
go into the nearby hills, because that’s where the fearsome “Jackson Whites”
lived. So some of the troops, of course, snuck off to the nearest bar in the
area—and nothing happened, he recalled.

Another Vietnam
vet, who grew up near Mahwah, interjected, objecting to the “Jackson Whites”
myth-making. “I knew a lot of those guys,” he said. “They’re like you and me.”

Well, Vietnam
veterans know a bit about negative stereotyping. The list of Hollywood movies
depicting crazed Vietnam
vets engaged in gratuitous, gruesome violence is long. Indeed, one of those
films—starring a Hollywood icon trying to save a fellow vet from a Pennsylvania mill town who disappeared into suicidal
Russian roulette matches in a mythical part of Vietnam—is the model for Out of the
Furnace, according to reviews.

im very familiar with their history theyre "BLUE-EYED NIGGERS" theyre a mix of between runaway slaves,british soldiers and white undesirables. now they want to cling to an identity and say theyre indians. A lot of them do meth and everyones sleeping with everyone. Its not racial profiling its history. Let those indians(BLUE-EYED NIGGERS)stay in the woods were they belong.

About Me

I'm a poet, journalist, author and editor of several books, including A Citizen's Guide to Grassroots Campaigns, Earth Songs: New and Selected Poems, and Winning Hearts & Minds: War Poems by Vietnam Veterans. I also teach writing workshops and college journalism courses. For more information: www.janbarry.net.